While in class on Thursday we watched a lot of “Rocky and Bullwinkle” and I was quite suddenly struck by a vivid childhood memory: “Rugrats” and their knock off version “Blocky and Oxwinkle” (the website won’t allow me to embed the video, but the link should take you to it).  At around the 8:30 minutes left to go mark, Blocky and Oxwinkle make their debut (they make more appearances throughout much of the episode). Amusingly enough, they also use the ticking clock/bomb gag like the one we watched in class. They also do the “tune in next time for <insert good option> OR <insert bad option>” send off.

As noted in good old wikipedia “Blocky and Oxwinkle [...] are an obvious parody of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Yuri and Svetana [...]: A pair of villains who try to trick and get rid of Blocky and Oxwinkle, and calling them ‘Elk and Weasle’. They are a parody of Boris and Natasha, and their nicknames for Blocky and Oxwinkle is a parody of ‘Moose and Squirrel’.” This website notes the differences between the spoof and the original: Blocky is a boy made of blocks with an ox friend named Oxwinkle (who oddly does not speak in the episode). Rocky is a flying squirrel with a moose friend named Bullwinkle who unfortunately speaks a lot and usually in bad puns. Both feature spies who chase the main characters around.

For compare and contrast purposes here is a picture of Blocky and Oxwinkle

And a picture of Rocky and Bullwinkle

The episode in question is titled “Sour Pickles” and was aired November 14 1993 . The timing here to me seems significant. The Cold War was not long over and based on evidence given in the episode (that TV was black and white with no remote control) the time period for the “Blocky and Oxwinkle” cartoon would be 1950-1962 as noted in this website (TVs were available before then but not mass produced and not many people had them, color TVs were first sold in 1962). Furthermore, one of the babies in the episode references to “President Weisenheimer” whom I took to be Eisenhower which further tightens the time frame to 1953-1961 That means anything from the death of Joseph Stalin to China’s entering the power competition, adding a third tier to the Cold War. But wait, yet another clue! The radio in the cartoon references Eisenhower denying claims about a downed US plane. After looking to wikipedia for a Cold War time line that one comment places this episode in May of 1960. The event being referenced is American Pilot Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane being shot down while flying over the Soviet Union.

What impresses me is how the history is fairly accurate and how sneakily it is fitted in. This makes me wonder about cartoons and the Easter eggs they put in for adults: the jokes kids will never get or will find funny for completely different reasons, the references from before their time, etc. Children watching this particular “Rugrats” episode in 1993 would quite feasibly have parents born before 1960 or who were familiar with the events of that time period of the Cold War and could thus appreciate the jokes, references, and so on while the episode is simultaneously interesting and amusing to children.

I commented on this blog and this blog

Advertisement